In "The ugliest flame war of all time"

Nazism and pedophilia. Awesome. Things like this are reason I stick to sites like MoFi and MeFi. The god awful stupidity of some of people out there that participate in such things is downright scary. Sometimes I'm happy living my bubble.

In "Curious George: Where is David Yow?"

I was at the Rainbo Club in Chicago (Damen and North) about a year ago and I saw him there, and bought him a couple drinks. Not sure if he lives in Chicago or what, I assume he does, but was pretty open and friendly. Not at all the crazed, half-coherent madman I was expecting. Pretty articulate guy actually. I heard a rumor that he actually has a law degree, but I was too star struck at the time to ask.

In "Pfft... Yeah, it's on 5th and 82nd, but the windows all face North..."

Why do people dislike Lenny Kravitz so much? As Captain Renault alludes to in his FPP, it's mostly because his musical career has consisted of recycling old crap and repackaging it with contrived hipness. Musically, he's a leech, he's added nothing original to the canon (as it were). But that's just his musical career. His other career is as a celebrity: being famous for being famous. And he's a pretty dude that always gets the hot chick. That always pisses people off.

In "Curious George: Salary Slavery?"

If you found yourself surprised by being required to work more than 40 hours per week, I am going to assume that you are not payed very well or are not eligible for a hefty bonus, and as such, this is fairly junior position. In this instance, any non-compete you may have been asked to sign is not enforceable, and as rocket88 said, really can only extend to non-disclosure of company or trade secrets. Hell, I know Managing Directors at major investment banks that hopped from one firm to the other in the same product and industrial sector, and had no repercussions from it. And ALL those guys signed official enough looking non-competes. If I were you, I would see if I could find out from your manager or recruiter/HR rep why the OT requirement was not specified during the hiring process, and how they intend to compensated you for the over and above commitment (the legally standard work week is still 40 hours, thank you organized labor). They will have to give you some compensation for it, whether in terms of bonus eligibility, OT pay or comp-time (which is uniformly bullshit IMO). If you're not happy with any of those remedies or explanations, I would move on. Personally, I wouldn't work for any employer that insisted upon that much OT without compensation for it, in any economy.

In "Citizenspook on TreasonGate:"

And "Woodstein?" Have they merged into one hybrid creature now? Ever seen or read All The Presidents' Men? WaPo senior editor Ben Bradlee is reported to have referred to them as that since the very early days of the Watergate investigation.

In "Alpha Mom (The Martha Stewart of Parenting)."

Isn't it obvious to anyone else that the article is set up to make you hate her? Not necessarily. For every ten people who were disgusted by this article, there may have been one or two New Yorkers that were inspired by this woman's example. These people do exist, unfortunately.

Honestly, as much as my wife and I miss NYC (and we miss it A LOT), the bars, the restaurants and the fun... on balance, we're so much happier since we moved to Connecticut to start our family, mostly just to not have to share resources or otherwise have to deal with people like this.

Hurl.

In "The Ryugyong "Hotel""

That is creepy as hell. Fascinating. This is an outstanding post, btw.

In "Fat Britney Chosen for new Holostamps"

Preposterous, flashboy. Do you believe that anyone in 2056 will remember was USB was?

In "ATTENTION SCOOTER NERDS:"

I'm sorry, no matter what certain parts of the world think, scooters are dorky. There is no way to look cool on a scooter. Cool is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I hold absolutely the same view of yuppie pretend rebels riding Harley Fat Boys. Look like dorks trying to be bad asses. Scooters, OTOH, are pretty cool, and project an understated machismo: unless you've tried to ride an underpowered 149cc Piaggio through city traffic yourself, you have no idea the type of balls are required to do it.

In "The American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movie quotes of all time."

Well, I think we could all do without "Show me the money" and "I'm king of the world", but some of these are okay, I mean as far as the parameters of this go: movie quotes that have ended up in the vernacular. I would have liked to see more stuff along the following lines, but perhaps these are too specific to my generation: "Plate of shrimp", "Let's get sushi and not pay" and "did you do a lot of acid in the hippie days?" from Repo Man; "I want you to hold the chicken between your knees" from Five Easy Pieces, "this isn't Russia, Danny... is this Russia?" from Caddyschack; and "it's the one that says 'bad motherfucker'" from Pulp Fiction.

In "Jazz Guitar Primer"

This is awesome. Glad to see it online. If you are looking for something a bit more rock oriented (but covers some of the same ground), I recommend Richard Lloyd's lessons.

In "The History behind Billy Joel's "We didn't start the Fire""

Interesting. Well I guess there are quite a few people that like this song. Learnt something new today. It's just I always thought that this tune had one of the most insidiously evil choruses in pop music history, the kind that you just can't get out of your head, and not in a good way; in a really bad tv commercial jingle kind of way. In the limited circles in which I run, this song has always been something of a cultural touchstone. A tune that when mentioned by name, everyone kind of groans, and rolls their eyes, and thinks (or says), "you dick, now I'm going to start thinking about singing the chorus in my head, which will lead to actually singing it in my head and I won't be able to get it out of my head unless I drink about a gallon of booze jab myself in the ear with a screwdriver." I had alwasy considered this a really, really crappy bubblegum pop song, despite the fact that its litany style lyrics are admittedly somewhat interesting/clever/amusing. But not enough to redeem its God-awful cloying catchiness (similar to the other disposable gimmicky pop tunes of that era, like "Ice Ice Baby" or "Don't Worry be Happy"). I am very surprised to learn here that the song's appeal actually has endured with some folks.

I have often thought of Billy Joel's music as cabaret that's okay for straight men to like (not that there's anything wrong with that). But not in a million years did I imagine that there was a single soul that actually liked "We Didn't Start the Fire". I don't think anyone should be criticized for liking it, necessarily, it's just unimaginable to me that anyone would.

In "Long after Uncle MeFi is gone,"

There are those who will beat down posts as trivial, but will make 264 comments on a thread about some obscure comic book superhero. Amen to that. I am a relative new comer to MeFi (member since 2002), and was addicted to it for a couple of years, but lately I have grown weary of the emphasis on posters' ideological consistency over actual meaning or enjoyable conversation in the blue. The grey is just insufferable. The result is seeing the same conversation over and over and over again. When Matt opened up the rolls last November, I had hope it would change, but lately it's been just as bad as ever. I still go there (when it's up) to see what's up and make the occasional wry comment, but more and more, I find myself checking out MoFi.

In "Special obscenity unit:"

I don't know from obscene, but that cum swapping gif (the advertisement) sure was pretty gross.

In "Say Goodnight America"

No one ever went broke by predicting doom. As in all things, the answer is probably somewhere between pollyanna's and chicken little's proclamations. Besides, if it's too late to do anything about it, we'll all find out shortly, won't we?

In "Senate agrees to arctic drilling"

No question there are better arguments, but the "one day of oil argument" is a pretty good one in terms of highlighting the WTF factor. If drilling in the ANWR meant freeing the US from its dependence upon foreign oil for 5-10 years, to give us time to figure out another way, even the most hard boiled environmentalist might see his/her way to agreeing with it. But for that little oil? Makes no sense at all (Hüsker Dü).

Oh, but hey, guys. That paragon of journalistic integrity, the Washington Times reports:

Mrs. Murkowski said new "diagonal drilling" technology that allows a single pumping station to extract oil from multiple wells at once should convince environmentalists that wildlife will not be disturbed if ANWR exploration and the subsequent drilling is allowed. "I make the claim that what we do in Alaska in terms of oil and gas drilling is in balance with the environment and as nondisruptive as possible," Mrs. Murkowski said. "We have figured out how to do it right." With oil prices soaring to $55 a barrel, Congress is focused on relieving the country's dependence on foreign oil and natural gas.
I'm sure they'll so it very gently. But beside the point, even if they can extract the oil without so much as ruffling a penguin's feathers, why is it worth the risk at all FOR ONE DAY OF OIL? Furthermore, is that paltry amount of oil really going to alleviate price pressure on oil? More likely it will put more money into the pockets of the likes of Halliburton, if only to compensate them for having to return some of the money they stole from us, er I mean, overcharged the US government for.

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